Dragonheart Core

In the wake of that fucking nightmare, they all stared at each other. And at the corpse.

Myra, the poor bastard, was sprawled flat and bloodless over the ground—her long hair tangled into the crevasses of stone where she'd been dropped like a depleted vein, nothing more than a memory. Bloody figured how Shoth made a team.

Alda Thrudkurbiz gave herself half a second to hate a shadow.

The issue wasn't the corpse, which was an issue in of itself. No, the issue was what had made the corpse.

She wasn't scared of many things. Hard to be, when the world outside Athábakhanú functioned like canaries in open fields. Water was safe to drink; paths were safe to walk; skies were safe to admire. Hells, even the cold was the kind for wool blankets and hearthstones, not death. A perfectly soft existence.

But she knew she was Silver. She knew the strength of Golds.

Shoth had been an understandable evil, the kind she'd been familiar with long before coming to Calarata. Make a plan, find a group perfect to slip under the radar of the Guildmaster without being dead weight, drip some of her brew into his drink while they talked specifics, and then set up for a proper launch. He'd played his part in her stageplay with lovely precision.

Up until he'd killed Myra, ascended, and ran.

From twelve to eleven to ten to nine to seven. Not odds she favoured, even when Shoth had been little more than an irritant and bastard. She didn't have much a fear he'd win—you couldn't claim a dungeon core with two people, especially with one of them useless as sand deposits—but his running meant their lack. Seven wasn't a comfortable number.